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Coal Ash Is [100 times] More Radioactive than Nuclear Waste
Scientific American ^ | December 13, 2007 | Mara Hvistendahl

Posted on 01/14/2016 5:04:56 PM PST by grundle

In fact, the fly ash emitted by a power plant - a by-product from burning coal for electricity - carries into the surrounding environment 100 times more radiation than a nuclear power plant producing the same amount of energy.

(Excerpt) Read more at scientificamerican.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Government; Miscellaneous
KEYWORDS: archcoal; archcoalbankruptcy; climatechange; climatechangehoax; coal; coalash; epa; flyash; globalwarming; globalwarminghoax; iran; marahvistendahl; necessarilyskyrocket; nuclearpower; obama; popefrancis; putingaveiranthebomb; radioactive; romancatholicism; scientificamerican; waroncoal
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To: Zathras

Ooops, Th232


41 posted on 01/14/2016 5:43:13 PM PST by Zathras
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To: Ruy Dias de Bivar

Eco-crats seem to believe that the power to detect is the power to eliminate. And the more sophisticated/precise/tiny results you can detect, the more you can force someone else to take reductive actions beyond a rational cost/benefit analysis. It’s the triumph of precision over common sense. But only if someone else has to pay for the remediation.

The environmental czar in California drove photo labs in the Bar Area out of business with ever-tightening anti-silver pollution regulations. A photo buff himself, he mixed up photo chemistry for his own use at home and poured the used results down the drain. When confronted about it, he just shrugged and said it wasn’t a big deal.


42 posted on 01/14/2016 5:46:54 PM PST by sparklite2 ( "The white man is the Jew of Liberal Fascism." -Jonah Goldberg)
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To: SubMareener

Around the time you were doing this, the Chinese were testing nuclear weapons in the atmosphere. Anyone who is alive today and was alive then has some of their radiation in his/her bones.


43 posted on 01/14/2016 5:49:48 PM PST by sparklite2 ( "The white man is the Jew of Liberal Fascism." -Jonah Goldberg)
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To: grundle
These folks will be singing a different tune once the right people own the coal mines. Then they'll be talking about the amazing ways coal can be transformed into clean fuel to produce electricity.

All the people like Soros who are ticked off because Buffett basically cornered the rail industry that transports coal when they were too stupid to see the potential are buying the coal mining stocks. Once they have control, it'll be coal, coal, coal.

44 posted on 01/14/2016 5:57:26 PM PST by Rashputin (Jesus Christ doesn't evacuate His troops, He leads them to victory.)
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To: grundle

Naturally the nuke apologists would put forth this failure of a comparison. For instance, there’s the little incident at Fukushima wherein three nuclear power cores were released into the environment in one earthquake followed by tsunami and have been venting radioactive waste into the air, land and ocean for the past five years and will continue to do so indefinitely. Can you name a coal disaster that had this kind of devastating impact and long-term rammifications for human health? How much MOX is there in coal? Because at least one of those Fukushima cores was MOX.

Let’s make a better comparison. How long could you safely hold a lump of coal on your hand compared with how long you could hold a lump of uranium before it harmed you? Why does DOT require massive lead shielding just to transport radioactive ccesium that is much less powerful than uranium or plutonium from nuke power plants? If coal was so radioctive, why wouldn’t nuke plant ts use it to produce energy instead of uranium? Why is it legal for me to buy a lump of coal but not a lump of uranium? Why is there no “weapons grade” coal? Nuke apologists should know enough science to understand the sham science displayed in the OP is propaganda. Either professional standsrds for the nuke industry are absent or they are intentionally deceiving the public with trash commentary like the OP.


45 posted on 01/14/2016 6:03:08 PM PST by ransomnote
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To: x_plus_one
Radioactive Tritium is at every nuclear plant site, down deep, in the ground water, and it is spreading like kudzu. You don't want to be anywhere near it. You don't want your family near it.

Total BS. Where the hell did you get that bit of misinformation?

46 posted on 01/14/2016 6:11:30 PM PST by Ditto
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To: Rebelbase
The EPA did a study, cited here in this excellent article on sources of radioactivity on Gaia, that shows that we are naturally expose to 3 milli rem annually.

http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxprofiles/tp149-c6.pdf

Living in a concrete home elevated this exposure to 7 milli rem. In 1979 the EPA stated that considering all 250 coal fired plants increased the cancer rate by 1.5 cancers as noted on page 236.
Really good article from the CDC!

47 posted on 01/14/2016 6:12:08 PM PST by outofsalt ( If history teaches us anything it's that history rarely teaches us anything.)
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To: grundle
Fly ash can be radioactive: in places where Uranium is mobile in groundwater (with high flourine content) the Uranium will be collected by the coal, much like a charcoal filter. Some lignite in SW North Dakota, South Dakota, and Montana contains Uranium (USGS Publication TE463

It doesn't take much to monitor for radioactivity, in either the coal or the fly ash.

48 posted on 01/14/2016 6:12:18 PM PST by Smokin' Joe (How often God must weep at humans' folly. Stand fast. God knows what He is doing.)
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To: outofsalt; grundle

Hopefully a working link to the CDC article cited in my post. A good read on common radiation exposure statistics.
http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxprofiles/tp149-c6.pdf


49 posted on 01/14/2016 6:19:26 PM PST by outofsalt ( If history teaches us anything it's that history rarely teaches us anything.)
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To: Robert A. Cook, PE

So you’ve never heard of Chernobyl and you were unaware that the US settled a lawsuit with “Down With ders” following nuke testing g in Nevada nor did you ever study nuke “incidents” worldwide.


50 posted on 01/14/2016 6:27:36 PM PST by ransomnote
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To: robert14

In order for the scientists to survive they need government money, tow the line and you get fed dont and you starve


51 posted on 01/14/2016 6:38:54 PM PST by ronnie raygun
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To: ronnie raygun

I agree. That is why 99.7% of the scientidts believe in global warming. It is not based on science. They either tow the global warming scam or they are out of a job.


52 posted on 01/14/2016 7:17:25 PM PST by robert14 (cng)
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To: NewHampshireDuo
To put the article in perspective the following are some radiation exposures:

Chest xray 10 millirems
Full body cat-scan 1000 millirems
Cross country airplane flight 3 millirems
From Fly Ash 1.9 to 18 millerems depending on the study, and that is for those living close to the power plant. Fly Ash is not a problem!

53 posted on 01/14/2016 7:17:30 PM PST by cpdiii (DECKHAND, ROUGHNECK, GEOLOGIST, PILOT, PHARMACIST, LIBERTARIAN The Constitution is worth dying for.)
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To: robert14
Do not trust anything Scientific American says. Any orginization that supports manmade global warming is not scientific and cannot be believed.

Ditto - in spades. S.A. is all out for the Obama line, and wants to see the coal industry dead. They hate poor people and third world countries whose best bet for a better life is the energy from relatively cheap coal.
54 posted on 01/14/2016 8:03:39 PM PST by Montana_Sam (Truth lives.)
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To: sparklite2

Yes. When I was at Prototype in West Milton, Conn., we had several days where the cars in the parking lot tested above minimum detectable radiation from the Chinese tests.


55 posted on 01/14/2016 8:33:09 PM PST by SubMareener (Save us from Quarterly Freepathons! Become a MONTHLY DONOR!)
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To: grundle

Liberalism is impassioned ignorance.


56 posted on 01/14/2016 8:52:38 PM PST by Georgia Girl 2 (The only purpose of a pistol is to fight your way back to the rifle you should never have dropped)
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To: outofsalt

Eat a banana and then go visit a secure facility with Rad screening.


57 posted on 01/14/2016 9:01:30 PM PST by Ozark Tom
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To: grundle
Coal Ash Is [100 times] More Radioactive than Nuclear Waste.

I'm not qualified to judge the legitimacy of that "study."
I am as qualified as anyone else to observe that that is the best recent argument to replace the current ban on coal with current technology Nuclear power.

58 posted on 01/14/2016 9:11:49 PM PST by publius911 (IMPEACH HIM NOW! evil ignorant stupid or crazy-doesn't matter!)
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In fact, the fly ash emitted by a power plant - a by-product from burning coal for electricity - carries into the surrounding environment 100 times more radiation than a nuclear power plant producing the same amount of energy.
In fact, this is an apples-oranges comparison, and the amount of radiation carried into the environment by fly ash is ridiculously small. Nuclear plants nevertheless generate waste of different toxicity and durability. Low level stuff (the protective gear worn by certain staff) doesn't remain radioactive more than a few years, but the most radioactive stuff remains that way for 50,000 years. Remember also that there's always an agenda when it comes to the greeniacs -- and these other facts are and will continue to be used against nuclear power. Obviously the fast breeder system would be a better way of doing things, assuming no more jihadists control the gov't.


59 posted on 01/14/2016 10:45:31 PM PST by SunkenCiv (Here's to the day the forensics people scrape what's left of Putin off the ceiling of his limo.)
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To: robert14

I have heard since the Anti-Nuke debates of the 1970s that coal ash has a measurable amount of radioactivity — whether it’s 100 times, I don’t recall, but people are generally ignorant about what’s radioactive and what isn’t, the relative amounts, and the different types.

The point at that time was that you should not freak out over something which is no more dangerous than a long-accepted environmental condition which NO ONE worries about.

Concrete is radioactive too.


60 posted on 01/15/2016 3:21:13 AM PST by Flash Bazbeaux
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